_Col. E_. My daughter is not here, I see. There lies Sir Edward. Shall
I tell him the secret? No, he'll certainly blab it. But he's asleep,
and won't hear me;--so I'll e'en venture. (_Goes up to_ SIR EDWARD,
_whispers him, and exit_.)

END OF THE FIRST ACT.

FINIS.

* * * * *

Her own mature opinion of the desirableness of such an early habit of
composition is given in the following words of a niece:--

'As I grew older, my aunt would talk to me more seriously of my reading
and my amusements. I had taken early to writing verses and stories, and
I am sorry to think how I troubled her with reading them. She was very
kind about it, and always had some praise to bestow, but at last she
warned me against spending too much time upon them. She said--how well I
recollect it!--that she knew writing stories was a great amusement, and
_she_ thought a harmless one, though many people, she was aware, thought
otherwise; but that at my age it would be bad for me to be much taken up
with my own compositions. Later still--it was after she had gone to
Winchester--she sent me a message to this effect, that if I would take
her advice I should cease writing till I was sixteen; that she had
herself often wished she had read more, and written less in the
corresponding years of her own life.' As this niece was only twelve
years old at the time of her aunt's death, these words seem to imply that
the juvenile tales to which I have referred had, some of them at least,